I cannot speak to Calvin's "other" business practices, I am not informed.

But I do have to chime in on the issue of when an originator is paid for the loan. I worked for a time in a business that had a similar structure. From where I sit, this is unfair to the originator. The reason I don't have my own business (with all the glory and pain) is that I never wanted to assume the risk for other employee mistakes.

If I originate a loan, and I document the loan, and I am honest and deliver a good loan, I don't believe it should be my problem if the end investor does not purchase the loan. I have been in a situation where , for some reason or another (they don't like the appraisal, they have information inside their system that this borrower has applied with them through another investor, they don't believe the borrowers live in the property) whatever! Or, it is sitting at the end investor for weeks, or lost, or in an audit.

If I do what I am being compensated to do to the best of my ability, why should I assume the risk of a fickle investor? If my employer hires an underwriter who approves this loan, how do I control when and if the end lender purchases the loan?

Under this circumstance, why would I even bother? This model means that I could work sunup to sundown, do what I was contracted to do, and not get paid. Who does that?

I think the employer should assume the risk here.

I could go on and on. But that setup cost me money several times and I finally decided that I didn't want the risk of owning a company I didn't own.

Based on this model..............another good reason to find something else to do other than be a Loan Officer creating the business for the rest of the company to "have something to do"............
Eventually they'll have to spend upfront money on advertising to bring in the loan apps. Enter............telemarketing sweat shops but only for those that can front the costs.

I understand the concept.........but I see the near future of that model.

What would I know................only 26 yrs of succesful running of this biz...............that's it.............i'm done................on to brighter ventures.
Not a quiter, just a business man where it makes sense. This ain't making sense any more short or long range.

I hear you T. I've been at it 20 years, and have been successful. I still have a great loyal database of past customers. But I also see the writing on the walls. Work for a giant retail bank (well, we all know that story) work for a brokers (get squeezed out by the big banks above) , work for a correspondent lender (they want you to assume their risk). It doesn't make too much sense to me.

I am also a business person and can see other opportunities. Like many other industries, this one has been a good ride, but the rewards don't seem to match the efforts anymore.

I have not yet given up, I'm waiting to see how the new administration shakes things out, but definitely don't see a bright future in the industry.

Other than that, the world is still turning, I woke up this morning, and I do love my life .

A few quick points of clarification here, and then the world is more than welcome to judge for themselves. I have nothing to hide; hence my posting under my given name rather than some cloak-and-dagger assumed identity.

1.) Anyone who is interested in the actual facts and really wants to know both the story of the legal settlements Assurity entered into with various state regulators over direct mail advertising from its direct lending division (which currently comprises approximately 12 of our 240+ employees), as well as who I am, and what I stand for and believe in, can simply click on my name in the forums and read away. If you are of the same opinion after reading my posts, then you are certainly entitled to your opinion - it's a free country (sort of).

2.) It's Assurity Financial Services, LLC (not incorporated).

3.) In direct response to "How much legal trouble are you in?" I would offer that we have amicably settled every inquiry from every regulator, period, end of story. Again, you can read the details in a few of my posts, but I think the following comment sums it up best: "In the fragmented, patchwork quilt of state regulation, where you have 50 different sets of regulators with 50 different opinions on an open-ended topic like advertising, compliance with opinion becomes an impossibility." That being said, I can't stress enough that we had our advertising vetted with HUD on 4 different occasions and had the literal stamp of approval from other state regulators - no kidding. Finally, all advertising of the type complained about was stopped in March of 2008 in all states because frankly it didn't make economic sense to continue to fight the government over the topic that we should be able to educate consumers about refundable monies the government holds of theirs that they could put to good use before Uncle Sam uses it up.

4.) To know the whole story, it wasn't just Arizona that we tangled it up with and entered into a settlement agreement with. We also entered into agreements with the states of Washington and Idaho over these issues. We are currently in dialogue with a couple of others to settle the same issues (these things take time to handle properly). Monetarily, we paid the following settlement amounts to the following states to settle the issues rather than the incur the expense of litigation, which we would have done if the states had not been willing to settle: $15,000 to Arizona; $125,000 to Washington, $15,000 to Idaho, and there is one final, ongoing settlement discussion with a couple of other states that we are just now finalizing that I'm sure you will get to read about soon. But after that, I suspect the issue in its entirety will be behind us. I would have thought that someone trying to defame me / Assurity would at least bring them all up at once, so I'll do the legwork for you here. It's a real big secret.

5.) The comments that Assurity is a "broker hater" are laughable at best. I am one of the few that dare to speak up and defend the broker community on these forums and TPO lending as a whole. Assurity puts its money where its mouth is and we have a healthy wholesale lending channel.

6.) The implication that Assurity is under financial duress is an interesting one and I'm not quite sure how to couch my comments here. All I can tell you is that we are okay right now, but that in this environment, anything can change overnight, but that's true for any lender. I wrote a couple of detailed posts about our financial position and the decisions I have made as CEO and CFO to get us where we are today. I invite you all to read them if you really are interested. In short, we are trying our best, and doing well at present. But if, say, we lost our lines of credit overnight, or all of our investor relationships, or got fined millions and millions of dollars in a frivolous lawsuit or something, it would threaten our going concern. Again, I'm not sure how this is different from any company in the industry right now?

7.) I know there are a lot of bitter people out there, and I don't know what to say about that. On our end, for example, we used to have over 600 employees operating out of 7 offices; we were forced to downsize to just over 240 currently operating out of three locations. Guys, we didn't let you go for personal reasons, we had to downsize like everyone else, and I'm truly sorry we can't offer a job to everyone. We have our own finite capacity constraints just like everyone else. However, I truly believe that the vast majority of Assurity's remaining employees represent the industry's professional experts doing good business - and that includes our beleaguered direct lending group, by the way. They are some very good people that got caught in the middle of a political tsunami, but they still show up every day putting their hearts and souls into the job and I for one and damn proud to work with each and every one of them. I'll fall on my sword defending them right to the bitter end.

Looks like I will need to cut and paste this to a few different threads as the sabre-rattlers out there that would try to create a run on our mortgage banking operation have posted under various anonymous identities in varying locations. I apologize in advance for the redundancy but feel it necessary to tell "the rest of the story."

Kind regards,

_________________"When they came for everyone else, I said nothing. Then, when they came for me, there was no one left to listen."

The practice of paying the LO when the file is cleared from the warehouse line is becoming more and more common. There is a large company here in Dallas that does the same thing. Unfortunately what it does is cause these companies to lose their top notch talent because honestly who wants to wait weeks or months to get paid on a loan. Especially in times like these when every single dollar counts. My company has brought in two LO's from that other lender because they have had to wait up to 90 days to get paid commission on a loan because the closing department did not ship the package correctly to the investor.

cedubu - have no fear. Correspondent lenders who are taking 90+ days to get loans sold on secondary are not long for this world. Their warehouse banks won't put up with it anymore, and when their lines are gone so they will be also.

cedubu - have no fear. Correspondent lenders who are taking 90+ days to get loans sold on secondary are not long for this world. Their warehouse banks won't put up with it anymore, and when their lines are gone so they will be also.

Robin is dead-on. If you had severely aged collateral like that, you would get margin calls, often times for the full loan amounts. Best case scenario, you would get a margin call for perhaps 10% to 20% of the loan amounts per month and have to continue to cough up the cash until you owned 'em outright.

Gotta roll those lines 2 to 3 times per month or you get shot in the heart on liquidity.

_________________"When they came for everyone else, I said nothing. Then, when they came for me, there was no one left to listen."

"An email was sent to Underwriters, Processors and the Closing Department on 2008-12-23. It reads, in part:

If we do not clean up our act we are really not going to have to worry about it because our investors are now tracking weekly our loans to see if they are insured within 30 days and we are spending time putting together reports on why we are not meeting our deadlines. Since this has been an ongoing problem, we have now been put on Countrywide and Chase's Executive's Watchlist. I think you all know this is our two largest investors and if they go away so do we."

In difficult times things change and we all have to be willing to make some sacrifices. Waiting for a commission should only impact a good LO for a short period of time until the pipeline catches up. Today, it is in every company's best interests to roll the pipe as quickly as possible and get loans off the line. Frankly, the owner of the company would have to be an idiot to still have people on the payroll who were not motivated to do exactly that.

For a loan officer to say "I did my job, the rest is up to the company" I find to be rather selfish and self-serving and, imho, exhibits an attitude of a lack of loyalty to an employer.

So now it's the LO's job to follow the loan all the way through post closing just to hope they get paid?
I believe it is the LO's job to submit a good clean file with all of the small details done correctly to get the file all the way to closing. Once it is closed the LO should trust in the fact that the company has people in place to make sure that the file gets packaged and shipped correctly. How are we supposed to keep bringing in business (originating) if we now have to follow the file all the way through post-closing. It is not selfish at all. Perhaps you have forgotten that it is the business the LO brings in that keeps the doors open. Do the processors, UW, closers, funders, etc... all have to wait until a loan is cleared off the warehouse line to get their paychecks? No, they get paid bi-weekly no matter what.

So why do the most important piece of the puzzle have to wait? Please explain...

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